At http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=1058 drj explained how to boot Puppy Type 1 HD install from an NTFS partition using Grub4DOS/Grub4NTLDR.
This technique can be used to boot Puppy from USB flash drive, too.
For those of us with an existing Window$ installation on a single NTFS partition, and a BIOS which cannot boot directly from a USB device, this is ideal because -
1. no need to boot via floppy
2. no need to create a linux partition on the hard drive
3. no need to mess with the hard drive's Master Boot Record.
4. no need to make the USB flash drive bootable.

There are just 4 files to add to the C drive, less than 8MB in total.

Here is a quick HowTo.
(See http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html for thorough explanation of Grub4DOS.)

Boot your Window$ NT/2k/XP installation.
Get Grub4DOS here http://sarovar.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=320&release_id=507
Extract the files using WinZip. We only need the Grub4NTLDR component - grldr. Copy grldr to C:\
From the Puppy CD (or ISO) copy vmlinuz and image.gz to C:\boot\
From the Puppy CD (or ISO) copy usr_cram.fs to the flash drive (a pupfile will be created on the flash drive the first time it is booted).

Create a text file with notepad called menu.lst in C:\boot\grub\ This is what it should contain -

Hello,
I have a doubt on that. Does this really work if the Mother board has not an option to boot from the USB port? I mean the BIOS. Because I have tried different thumb drives (about 15 makes), and failed to do so. So please post that if you can boot without a compatibe BIOS.
Regards
Max

Hello,
I was wondering if anybody has had success with this method. My Bios does not allow booting from usb, but I really don't want to carry a fragile (not to mention cumbersome) cd around with for when I want to use linux. All other options are unacceptible to me as well for various reasons. So, if there are any success stories out there, please don't hesitate to brag about it.

Sorry, slight error in my original instructions - "PHOME=sda" is wrong, it should be "PHOME=sda1"
Also, the forum's text formatting may be showing a line break when there shouldn't - the line starting with "kernel" is followed by the line starting with "initrd".

I just tried this now with Puppy 1.0.7 and it works fine on a Pentium2 motherboard circa 1999. The onboard USB1.0 port works, and so does the PCI-card-USB2.0 port.

Max Raign wrote:

Does this really work if the Mother board has not an option to boot from the USB port?

Yes, because the process I have described boots the kernel and initial ramdisk from hard disk. Then the filesystem (usr_cram.fs) and persistent storage (pup100) are accessed from the USB drive.

For the sake of an easily confused newbie could you clarify one point? Are the lines in your instructions starting with "kernel" and "initrd" supposed to be one continuos line or two with no extra spaces between them?

By the way some of you who are having problems may be having them because your USB drive is not sda or Puppy is not on the first partition of the drive (sda1 - unlikely but possible).

The easiest way to test this may be to use this line instead of tempestuous' suggested line:

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PSLEEP=25 PFILE=ask

Puppy will then boot and ask you which partition you want to use, including both your hard dirves and your flash drive (or it should, if all works properly). Then choose your USB drive as per the instructions and type "pup100" at the prompt for the file name.

This has worked fine for me on multiple computers. I use it all the time.

a) should the USB key be formatted in some way before putting the programs up?

Default FAT32 formatting is fine.

gianni76 wrote:

b) what size USB is sufficient?

You need 68MB for pup_200.sfs, plus your saved data file pup_save.3fs, which has a default size of 512MB, but Puppy will create a smaller file if it sees you don't have enough space.
So who knows ... 128MB might be enough? Certainly 256MB should be fine.

Puppy does it again!
I can confirm that Puppy 109CE will boot and run very easily from a 256 Meg flash drive. Even better, this computer has no CD or a floppy drive, nor a USB boot option in the BIOS..

The story goes like this. I discovered a UK-based PC dealer selling secondhand Compaq Ipaq 500 MHz machines for £14.50 GBP. The specifications were reasonable, with a 500 Mhz Intel processor, 8.4 Gig hard drive and 128 megs of RAM. So I bought one just for the fun of playing around. I then added another 128 megs of RAM. On booting the computer up, I also discovered Windows 2000 Pro NTFS was pre-installed. This did make life a bit easier.
The 256 meg flash drive I was going to use is generic (purchased from my local Co-operative store about a year ago). The semi-transparent housing shows the chip, which reads, 'BUFFALO. RUF-C256ML/U2E'. If that's of any help. I adhered to Tempestuous original boot script with one exception, changing the boot reference to the suggested, 'kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PSLEEP=25 PFILE=ask'. Everything else remained the same.
Taking the simple option, I copied Puppy 109CE's vmlinuz, image.gz and usr_cram.fs from another computer with a CD, onto the flash drive I was going to use as the host. Once the Ipaq was booted into Windows, I moved vmlinuz and image.gz from the flash drive to C:\boot\.
Then, the moment of truth.
My first boot was unsuccessful - simply because of my impatience - and failing to state that I wanted Puppy to boot from sda1. The second try started smoothly and continued to do so. I'm currently running Puppy on the USB flash drive. It was worth it. Aside from the computer's fan humming quietly away in the background, there is no other sound. Puppy 109CE, complete with Firefox, is running very sweetly.

I mean, compared to an ordinary "poor man's install", where all this stuff is on the hard drive.

The only thing I can think of, is that you can haul your USB flash around pretty easily, and run it off someone else's computer. But if you do that, you still have to mess around with their autoexec.bat and get grub set up on their machine. Hard to imagine someone going along with that...

Everyone has their own particular circumstances. This technique evolved in response to a private message I received from a forum member who wanted to run Puppy on their employer-owned laptop. The laptop had no floppy drive, so Bootpup could not be used.
The IT department strictly disallowed any "foreign" software on their machines, but made an exception for the 8MB of Puppy bootup files, after the forum member demonstrated how it worked on a separate laptop.

And this system can be made slightly more portable by having the necessary bootup files already on the USB drive, in the correct directories, ready to copy to a Windows machine for the first time just prior to rebooting this machine to the USB drive. This simplifies the initial setup.

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